"What you find now in a growing concentration, almost ghetto-like form, are these families being broken, and kids losing their childhood, becoming mini-adults without any of the understanding," he said.

"A lot of the girls on the estates, what they forget is, in these sorts of families where they never see a father figure, it affects them too.

"The high level of sexualisation is often down to the fact that young girls feel that the only way of having a relationship with a boy is by offering sex because that's all they've ever seen from their mothers and often levels of abuse from men.

"And so it's understanding that empathetic care and love from a man can be possible for that girl without necessarily having to be bargained with over sex."

The gaze of the baby-faced dad has also shone the spotlight on the tabloid newspapers reporting the story.

The Sun bought the story first after Alfie's father told his son he could make a lot of money.

Now just about every other tabloid in Britain is trying to get in on the action, and the children are at the centre of a media feeding frenzy.

Camped outside the homes of both families in East Sussex, the media are locked in a bidding war, with sums of up to $250,000 on offer.

Alfie's divorced parents are also at war over the story; his mother angry her ex-husband sold the story without her knowledge.

Darryn Lyons from Big Picture agency says it is all about the money.

"Don't shoot the messenger is the old cliché, and everyone's out there buying it," he said.

"But with the kind of money that's been bantered around by media organisations, someone will say, 'Who can blame them'."

Two other teenage boys are also now in the headlines with their own exclusive stories - they say they could be Masie's father as they both slept with Chantelle Stedman around the same time as Alfie Patten.

They want DNA tests, as does Alfie's family.

The media circus surrounding baby Masie's parents is far from over.

Adapted from a report by The World Today's Stephanie Kennedy on February 16, 2009.